Konami Reveals Metal Gear HD Remakes and More for E3

Konami, maker of Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill, isn’t waiting for next week’s E3 show to spill the beans on all its upcoming projects. On Thursday, the company hosted a live-streamed webcast of new game announcements, and hosting viewing parties all around the world.

[eventbug]The publisher said it would release three collections of its classic PlayStation 2 games, remastered in high definition for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Zone of the Enders are getting the remake treatment. A new game in the Silent Hill horror series is in production for Sony’s NGP handheld system, Konami said, but did not give further details about the project.

Konami also teased that a new game in the classic Contra series of run-and-gun arcade shooters was in the works, but provided no details beyond that.

Konami has already made a few small announcements leading up to the event this morning. It will bring a version of Frogger to the Nintendo 3DS this September, and it will launch a cutesy Major League Baseball game with bobblehead characters on Xbox Live Arcade around the time of the MLB All-Star game in July.

Live blog updates, with more details on the announced games, are below.

4:56 — The show should begin soon. Fans and writers are milling about, playing a few of Konami’s upcoming downloadable games like the very awesome-looking 2-D fighting game Skullgirls and the new version of BurgerTime. Any minute now…

5:07 — Apparently they’re going to start in about 5 minutes.

5:12 — Whoops! Looks like the entire presentation is actually pre-recorded and Konami gave all the news to G4TV.com already! So now I already know all the big news: Konami is preparing HD remake collections for Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Silent Hill: Book of Memories is coming to Sony NGP, and other bits of news. I’ll stay through the presentation to see what else Konami has for us here in San Francisco and write up my impressions of the news.

5:17 — Video begins. The president of Konami’s US branch is on screen introducing the announcements we’ll see today, thanking people for watching.

5:20 — Director of the 3DS game Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater is introducing his game. Apparently he started back on the first Metal Gear for the MSX computer, bug-checking. The purpose of the 3DS Metal Gear is to really show off the features of the system, he says. They’re working on creating a highly detail-rich jungle environment. They’ll be using all other features, too — Snake is able to blend into the environment using camouflage, and you can take pictures and use that photo as a camouflage pattern. Feature is called “Photo Camo.”

5:23 — You can use the 3DS motion sensor to balance Snake as he is climbing a tree, for example. He shows the trailer for Metal Gear.

5:26 — Ha! Snake peers through the trees and sees a tiny Yoshi hidden in the jungle. It makes the classic Yoshi noise. That’s right, wasn’t the PlayStation version of this game filled with Ape Escape apes and such? Maybe this is the replacement for that. Funny moment.

5:30 — Preview of the new features in Pro Evolution Soccer. If I knew anything at all about soccer I would write something here. It would be really interesting.

5:35 — Shinta Nojiri, cool dude and guy who made Metal Gear Acid, is talking about his new action game NeverDead. “The most unique feature, something you won’t find in any other game, is the fact that the player is immortal.” (How many games can you think of where the main character is immortal? Post them in the comments.) He loses limbs, but can’t be killed. Laughter from the audience as the guy on screen gets his arms chopped off and runs around limbless. This looks like fun!

5:39 — People are joking about this game on Twitter. I don’t think they are right. This looks wonderful. Was that enemy character called Sangria? Did it look like a larger version of the Chicken Lady from Kids in the Hall? This is a parody, right? It looks hilarious. It has an original song by Megadeth!

5:41 — You can roll his head around!

5:42 — Hey, it’s Tomm Hulett of the Silent Hill team, on the set of the new movie. They are going to tell us about new entries in the series.

5:44 — Silent Hill 2 and 3 will be retouched in HD in a new collection, he says. We of course already know that. And there will be an NGP game, too! Which we already know about. Because all the news already leaked out. Now it’s time for a trailer for the newest game, Silent Hill Downpour.

5:47 — It’s coming this winter, says the trailer. Hey, the president is back! Apparently they have one more surprise for us before they check out. Oh what, it’s Mark MacDonald! I know that guy. He is riding an escalator at Kojima Productions. Now he is yelling at Metal Gear producer Hideo Kojima, asking him why he’s not at E3 this year. They ride an elevator to his office to find out.

5:50 — They continue to perform in a comedy skit, and MacDonald asks Kojima about “this new gaming lifestyle you’ve been talking about.” They run a trailer. The trailer is… another comedy skit. It’s the Mega 64 guys this time. Two of them break into KojiPro, kidnap a janitor and make him reveal what the company is working on.

5:53 — Apparently it’s a new system called Transfarring [sic], in which you can take your saved games from the PS3 to the PSP, back and forth. It will work with the new PS3 version of the PSP game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. This will be included in the Metal Gear Solid HD collection, which will be released on both PS3 and Xbox 360. Konami will also do a Zone of the Enders HD collection of its cult hit shooter series.

5:58 — They’re doing a demo to show everyone how Transfarring [sic] works. It takes about 11 seconds to export your saved games from PS3 to PSP. The data is locked when you transfer it, so you don’t accidentally play the same save file and create a TIME PARADOX.

6:00 — Kojima would like to bring PlayStation 2 games to PS3 and PSP and use the Transfarring [sic] system for these, and later use the system for games that work on both PS3 and NGP.

6:02 — The Metal Gear Solid HD collection will be out in November. It will include games 2, 3 and Peace Walker. The Zone of the Enders collection will be out in 2012, and Kojima notes that it will be Transfarring [sic] enabled. Which means that there must be a portable version that has not yet been announced.

6:05 — Metal Gear Solid: Rising‘s designer is on screen saying that the game won’t be at E3, but that they are still working on it and stuff.

6:06 — Remakes and spinoffs aside, Kojima says he’s working on a new game, which he can’t talk about. They’re making a new engine for it called the Fox Engine.

6:08 — MacDonald and Kojima wrapping things up. Says Rising is coming in 2012, and he’ll be at E3 there to talk about it.

6:10 — It’s almost over! Where’s the special surprise at the end? Oh, it’s a very very brief teaser for a new Contra game. Aaand the show’s over.